[python-win32] Building pywin32 with the free MS toolkit compiler(Was: Problem with installer for pywin32 with Python 2.5)

[Mark Hammond]

> On 4/17/06, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/16/06, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I tried building one for myself, but I'm missing some critical
> > > dependencies (dsound.h?)
> >
> > I'm assuming this is from the DirectX SDK, which I'm in the process of
> > downloading now to try it out. Are there any other downloads I should
> > get in order to build pywin32? (I have the platform SDK - the setup.py
> > doesn't mention any others as still being needed, but then again, it
> > didn't mention the DirectX one either...)
>
> Looks like atlbase.h is needed in win32netuse and win32netuser. That's
> annoying, as it's not freely available, as far as I know.
>
> It's possible taht ATL isn't actually needed, though - commenting the
> includes out results in a successful compile. The link fails with an
> odd error, though -

Removing atlbase.h just meant that advapi32.lib needed to be added to the
link command-line - presumably the ATL headers automatically caused that to
happen.  I've just checked in a fix for that and removed that header.

> If I comment out win32net from setup.py, I hit a problem in
> win32wnet\PyNetresource.cpp, which uses ATL for Unicode conversion
> macros.

These conversion macros are fairly easy (but not search-replace easy) to
change, and I do it as I find it necessary.

> mapiutil also failed with ATL dependencies.

That seems to build simply by removing the #include.  I've checked that in
too!

> But then I hit win32ui, which I'd forgotten about completely - that
> uses MFC, doesn't it, so presumably there's no serious hope of getting
> it working without the full Visual C product.

It does - although many real projects can live without win32ui (and
therefore without Pythonwin).  Thus, this may still be a perfectly good
solution for people who want to be able to build everything they ship (or
just a debug build of what they actually use) - but not necessarily be able
to build the entire pywin32 world.

> At this point I gave up. I was impressed by how far things got with
> just the free stuff, but the lack of MFC and ATL is probably a
> complete showstopper.

As above - it is probably a showstopper for anyone hoping to recreate a
complete pywin32 build - but for many others it may be truly useful.

> Anyway, I'm posting this, not so much in the hope that it's possible,
> as to have it in the archives for future reference.
>
> It was an interesting exercise, in any case :-)

Thanks!  I welcome any other contributions (from anyone at all) towards this
end!

Cheers,

Mark